


Impressions in Passing

by icarus_chained



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Complicated Relationships, Curiosity, Doppelganger, First Impressions, First Meetings, Gen, Homecoming, gratitude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6922672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the Legends are back in 2016, Harry meets Professor Martin Stein. It doesn't immediately get him incinerated for wearing a dead murderer's face, which frankly by this stage he's rather thankful for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impressions in Passing

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of part of a loose collection with [Worth Fighting For](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6789661). I just wanted more Martin & Team Flash reunions and filling-in on what's been happening. I'm working up to Martin & Cisco. I don't know why it's always the ones I want most that I have most trouble with. So. Have an awkward bit of Harry & Martin in between?

As the minutes ticked past, Harry could feel his shoulders knotting tighter and tighter together. The other occupant of the workshop was staring at him. Thoughtfully and shamelessly. He could feel it, feel the placid, curious examination, and if the man didn't stop in the next _two seconds_ , Harry was going to throw something at him, risk of incineration be damned. 

Not that Professor Martin Stein, this universe's Martin Stein, actually could incinerate him without his other half. Both elements of Firestorm needed to be present for that. Nonetheless. Having seen the damage his Earth's Deathstorm could do, Harry wasn't eager to provoke the man. He'd already been almost fatally shot, several times, by people who looked at him and saw his usurped counterpart instead. He wasn't particularly eager to add 'wrongfully incinerated' onto the list of brief and agonising experiences that this Earth had so happily brought him.

Though Stein hadn't particularly seemed inclined towards that, either. He had straightened violently when he first saw Harry, one hand reaching automatically towards his partner, half protectively and half in readiness to fight, but Cisco had planted himself hurriedly in front of Harry and babbled out an explanation before anything could come of it. Harry still ... wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. 

Stein had seemed to accept the explanation readily enough, though. There'd been no obvious anger, no lingering distrust. Only this ... this continuing curiosity. This constant contemplation that was crawling an itch all the way up Harry's spine. For the better part of a day, now, whenever Stein was in range of him, he seemed to have this need to stare at him, to stand to one side and study him. It was driving Harry insane. In two seconds, _two seconds_ , he was going to fling something at the man. For god's sake, as fascinating as the man might find alternate universes, Harry himself could not possibly be _that_ intriguing.

Unless it was, of course, actually some remnant of his counterpart after all. Unless this was Stein's more subtle, passive-aggressive manifestation of distrust, waiting patiently for Harry to slip up and reveal the time-travelling maniac underneath.

Good _god_ , Harry was so fucking tired of that bastard and everything he'd done.

He sighed heavily, putting down the marker and rolling his shoulders to try and loosen them a bit in readiness. Stein stirred thoughtfully behind him. Recognising a man about to say his piece. Well then, Harry thought. All right. Let's not disappoint anyone.

"So," he said, tiredly as he turned. "What did my counterpart do to you, then?"

Stein blinked at him a little bit. "Technically speaking," he said after a moment, with a tinge of pedantry that had Harry's hand itching for an eraser, "as I understand it, _your_ counterpart did nothing to me at all, having been dead for some fifteen years before we ever met in earnest. I assume you mean the man who usurped him. Eobard Thawne?"

Harry grit his teeth. " _Yes_ ," he said, baring them in something that probably looking nothing like a smile. "The man who wore my face, the man who took my name, the man who apparently used both of them to do quite a bit of damage around here. You seem to find me fascinating, so I'm wondering just ... what it was he did to you."

He wasn't sure what to make of the man's expression after that. Something complicated, anyway, and surprisingly unhostile. Something thoughtful and vaguely shamed and with a hint in it of something not unlike pity. Harry blinked at him, shook his head in angry bewilderment. Stein shrugged gently back.

"... In hindsight," he said, with wry amusement. "In hindsight, I suspect he may have briefly sold me to the military to be tortured and almost executed." And then, while Harry was staring at him in mute dismay, he shook his head with a smile. "On the flipside, however, he also came up with the technology that saved myself and Ronald in the first place and allowed us to exist without imploding and taking most of Central City with us. For selfish reasons, most likely, but he might have allowed us to commit suicide instead and solve the problem that way. In some strange, twisted way, I believe he helped save us for Caitlin's sake. He was ... I think it safe to say he was a complicated man. It was never for my own sake that I hated him. It was his other crimes, the damage he did to Eddie and to Ronald, to Barry and Cisco and Caitlin, that I could never forgive."

Harry ... had nothing to say to that. He looked away, nodding silently. They were fair enough reasons to hate the man. They were a lot of the same reasons he did, though in his case there _was_ a certain visceral personal element as well. He had more than enough personal reasons to wish Thawne dead several times over. He'd only met the man once, long before/after he would do what he did, but that hadn't kept the bastard from almost managing to almost kill him multiple times, from beyond the grave and without ever personally meaning to. There was a sort of a cosmic humour in that. The kind that made Harry want to shoot things in the face.

"... None of which," Stein said hesitantly, drawing Harry's attention back around. The man shrugged at him sheepishly. "None of which has anything to do with my current reaction to you. I, ah. I have a feeling I should apologise for that. I'm sorry. A part of it is fascination. Just the, the thought of an alternate version of someone I might have known, even if, as it turns out, you are not a _direct_ counterpart ... You're still the only doppelganger I've seen personally. The visible differences and similarities are fascinating, I do admit. I may have been a bit invasive in trying to catalogue them. For that I apologise. I hadn't realised it was disturbing you quite so much."

Harry stared at him. "... Fascination," he repeated. More than a little incredulously. "You mean this entire time ... out of _scientific curiosity_? Someone who handed you over to be tortured, and you find his doppelganger fascinating for purely intellectual ...?"

Stein coughed, grimacing faintly. "Yes, I realise ..." he started. "It has been pointed out to me that I sometimes find things inappropriately and inordinately intriguing. Though, in my defence ... time travel, alternate universes, an external viewpoint on a potential personal future ... as terrible as these things can be, I would argue that there is an inherent ... inherent interest to being in a position to _see_ and to study ..."

He took in Harry's expression and coughed hastily again, cutting himself off mid-spiel. Harry for his part could only stare at him. He didn't ... he could see why Cisco liked the man, he thought eventually. Barry too. That whole 'this is so cool' reaction, even in circumstances where that really ought to be the least of their concerns. Though both Cisco and Barry seemed to be at least _slightly_ more sensible about it. And, yes, Harry may have had a touch of that reaction himself at times, some things _were_ incredibly fascinating, but ... but there were times and places, and so very many overriding concerns. Or at least there _should_ be.

Let's just say he was getting the impression that Martin Stein, had he been with them, would have been perfectly happy to stop on another Earth and take pictures, regardless of the fact that they were being hunted by a superpowered psychopath at the same time.

For god's sake. Just what _was_ it with this Earth anyway?

"Anyway," Stein said eventually, dismissing all of that with a wave of his hand. "Yes, I admit, quite a lot of my behaviour today was due to fascination, warranted or otherwise. Again, I apologise. But there was ... there was also another reason for my ... less than subtle curiosity. I did ... want to speak to you. I've heard a great deal of what has been happening here in my absence. I did want to ... get a better impression of you, the kind of man you were, before I spoke to you about it."

Well. That was ominous. Harry straightened automatically, shoulders back and ready, one hand grasping vaguely down at his right side. It annoyed him, that reaction. Reaching for a rifle that wasn't there. He'd noticed it creeping in more often lately. All his annoyance and conscious attention didn't seem to stop it. This Earth had tried to kill him more times, entirely independent of Zoom, than he really thought was fair.

Stein seemed to see something of that. More than Harry wanted him to, really, and he wondered idly if it was too late to finish this conversation with a thrown eraser. Though, yes. Threat of incineration afterwards. There was always that.

"... Thank you for looking after them in my absence," Professor Stein said, softly and abruptly, and Harry paused in his thoughts to blink stupidly at him. The man shrugged, a wry, regretful smile on his face. "I confess, I don't entirely understand what has been going on or your particular role in it, but it ... has been fairly clear since I arrived here that Cisco, Barry and the others trust you a great deal. They have been through a great many terrible things, and they have come through them with their trust in you intact, and indeed increased. That suggests to me that you have earned it, at least so far. You've been here for them, fought for them, when I could not. So. Thank you, Dr. Wells."

Harry stared at him. There was ... for any number of reasons, there was nothing in that that he could answer. Nothing in it that he would touch with a ten foot pole, nothing in it he wanted to even think about. So. So he sidestepped it. So his brain neatly short-circuited and shoved something else out of his mouth altogether.

"... Thank you for not incinerating me," he said, some sort of vague offering of gratitude in return. Stein's eyebrow went up, a startled arch, and Harry found himself stumbling through an attempted explanation. "No, really. I've been, ah, I've been shot, kidnapped and set upon by a telepathic gorilla so far because of him. Thawne. Being set on fire would have been ... I wasn't looking forward to it. And, I mean, I get it, I would ... would quite like to kill the man myself, but ..."

He trailed off, made himself, was vaguely tempted to physically reach in and grab his tongue to keep it still, and Stein coughed a bit, by his expression clearly struggling between amusement and sympathy and the knowledge of which was likely more appropriate. The former, Harry thought. By this stage, this universe might as well just laugh at him to his face and be done.

"... You're welcome," the Professor said at last. "I, ah. I'm sorry about that. I am trying to remain on the generally non-homicidal side of things." He grimaced faintly. "For a number of reasons, not least of which the fact that it is sometimes harder than it ought to be. But. Regardless. You ... have clearly had more than enough hardship without my adding to it. I apologise for any alarm my initial reaction may have caused."

Harry ... Harry shook his head. "You know what?" he said. "At this stage, so long as I'm not dead or further injured at the end of it, I'm calling it good. It's ... It's nice to meet you. Cisco talks about you sometimes. You seem ..." A long pause, while he groped around for a reasonably non-offensive phrase. "... like him. I can ... see why he likes you."

Look. Nobody'd ever accused him of being diplomatic, a fact which Harry _had_ , possibly, come to regret a time or two since coming to this universe. He hadn't thrown anything at the man yet, in spite of severe provocation. He honestly thought he was doing pretty well.

And possibly Stein thought so too, or possibly the man just had enough experience of those less-than-diplomatically-inclined of his own, but for whatever reason the man seemed happy enough to leave it at that.

"Yes," he said softly. "You know, I think I can see why he likes you too. You're very far from your counterpart's murderer, Dr. Wells. I think I can see what it is they see in you as well."

... Great, Harry thought. Excellent. And bully for the universe as well.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm honestly not sure how well these two would get along. Mr Mission-Oriented-Angry-Genius and the man who stood cheerfully/vindictively fascinated while the woman who'd tortured him went into nuclear meltdown _right there_. I suspect they would annoy each other. Heh. I did want to see them meet, though.


End file.
